Micah Alpern: HCI Student Speakers Series

Flash vs Director in HCI Courses

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 23:32:16 GMT

The Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon still teaches a number of classes in Macromedia Director. Since I just graduated from the masters program I decided to petition the department to consider replacing instruction in Director with Macromedia Flash. My argument was based on four points:

Why Flash over Director in HCII Courses?

1. It’s better for students

Smaller files

More programmable

Easier to use

2. More people can view it

3. More designers/programmers use it

4. There are more jobs available for it

Click through to read my full argument. At least one faculty member was swayed so I’m hopefully we may see some change.

HCI Student Speakers Series: John Kembel on Ideo

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 22:54:36 GMT

John Kembel, a CMU HCI PhD student, spoke about his experiences working at Ideo, one of the premier product design consulting firms.

He mentioned three fun books:

Prototyping User Interfaces in Adobe Photoshop

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 22:42:50 GMT

Matt Halpern gave a talk for the HCI Student Speakers Series on prototyping user interfaces in Adobe Photoshop. It was a great talk with lessons for beginners and experts a like. Matt didn't use powerpoint but you can download his sample files.

An Introduction to Computer Supported Collaborative Work

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 22:15:23 GMT

Kevin Sang Lee gave a talk for the Student Speakers Series about Computer Supported Collaborate Work. Kevin does research with Bob Kraut and strongly recommends students consider taking Dr. Kraut's CSCW class in the spring. Until then here the powerpoint slides from Kevin's talk.

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 04:38:05 GMT

Andrea Klein, a former HCI Masters student who is now working in User Experience at Tivo presented for the HCI Student Speakers Series on:

HCI in the Valley

Her slides include results from a survey of former MHCI students who were asked about their work experience, what they found most valuable at CMU and what they wish they had learned.

You can read the slides in Powerpoint or HTML format.

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 00:04:08 GMT

CMU Student Speaker Series:

Kevin Fox gave a talk today on the Design Process at Yahoo!

VoiceXML & Microsoft Speech.Net

Thu, 29 Aug 2002 20:31:18 GMT

Today I gave a talk for the CMU Sphinx speech reading group about my experience with VoiceXML and Microsoft Speech.NET.

Here are the slides- A Brief Introduction to VoiceXML & Microsoft Speech.NET
in PowerPoint or in HTML.

The VoiceXML section is a shortened version of a talk I gave for the HCI Student Speakers Series.
It's designed to teach novices users how to write basic VoiceXML applications using TellMe.

Here are the slides - A Super Easy Intro to VoiceXML
in Powerpoint or HTML .

Resume Writing and Cover Letters

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 07:22:57 GMT

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 20:01:40 GMT

HCI Student Speakers Series:
No talk this week

Since everyone is busy finishing work before spring break the HCI Student Speaker's Series will take the week off.

After Spring Break:
Writing Resumes and Cover Letters

When we get back, for those going to CHI looking for jobs, we will have a workshop on Writing Resumes and Cover Letters. The workshop is run by Career Services and will be held on WEDNESDAY April 10th from 4:30 - 6 pm in PeterWright auditorium in the UC. In addition a special Computer Science resume consultant will be available for consultation at the Carrier Services offices on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 - 5 pm.

The following week:
Thursday April 18 Rishi will give a presentation Macromedia Flash.

Pedro's talk on Macromedia UltraDev

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 19:49:17 GMT

no slides available- sorry you had to be there

Here's a diagram Pedro and Rishi drew to explain the relationship of Ultradev to your database, application server, and HTML generating programming language.

Here are some the early arrivals at the talk. We had 8 or 9 by the end. Usually we have a project but this week there were some technical issues which have since been resolved.

Tue, 19 Mar 2002 19:32:20 GMT

Powerpoint Slide Tutorial from Micah's Voice XML Talk:

Other Resources:

Samples

Talking hello world
- 1-800-555-VXML Developer ID: 95554 PIN: 8555

MobileBus
- A demo app that tell you when the next bus is coming so you don't have to wait out in the cold
- currently just a demo but could be made to work pretty easily
- 1-800-555-TELL at the prompt enter 1-95554
- MobileBus VoiceXML source code (broken link fixed)